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Gunman at an Omaha Mall Kills 8 and Himself

A victim was wheeled out of the Westroads Mall in Omaha after a gunman fired on shoppers.Credit
Nati Harnik/Associated Press

OMAHA, Dec. 5 — A gunman in camouflage and wielding a rifle opened fire on Wednesday in a department store at a mall here crowded with holiday shoppers, killing eight people and wounding five others, before turning the gun on himself.

The gunman, identified by the authorities as Robert A. Hawkins, who was 19 or 20, of nearby Bellevue, was described by friends as a depressed person who had lost his job at a McDonald’s restaurant earlier in the day.

Shoppers and store clerks described a scene of panic and chaos after hearing shots even as a pianist at the store played on.

Many witnesses, still in disbelief about what they had heard, dived into closets and storage rooms, crouched in dressing rooms, crowded behind desks and then began what became a long and terrifying wait, punctuated by more and more shots.

“All I could think was where is he, what if he comes through that door, what if he comes through right now,” recalled Kevin Kleine, 29, a shopper who hid in a storage room with her 4-year-old daughter, Emily, and four women she had never met, including an expectant mother.

The group pushed every table, rack and garbage can they could find against the door and huddled behind clothes, making hushed calls to 911, to their husbands and to their parents.

Then began the long wait, Ms. Kleine said, 30 minutes, staring at that door.

Many here said they could not fathom such a crime’s occurring in this relatively quiet city.

It was believed to be the deadliest single shooting incident in Nebraska history. As the state’s most populous city with 419,000 residents, Omaha, along the Missouri River, has elements of urban woes like drugs and gangs.

“I’ve never even heard gunshots here before,” Ms. Kleine said. “Honestly, I didn’t know what they sounded like until today, and I thought I never would.”

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Shoppers filed out of the Westroads Mall in Omaha after the shooting.Credit
Kiley Cruse/Omaha World-Herald, via Associated Press

The violent crime rate here jumped 7.6 percent last year over 2005, The Omaha World-Herald reported this fall. Over all, such crimes have diminished since 2001, the paper reported, noting that the violent crime rate was less than that of some other Midwestern cities like Des Moines and Kansas City, Mo.

Visitors to the Westroads Mall said they were eating lunch or browsing in stores when three or four shots sounded just after 1:30 p.m. on the third floor of the Von Maur department store.

Witnesses said they could not see where the shots had come from and scanned up and down the three floors of the mall, unsure how to escape something they could not see.

Others said they dismissed the noises as balloons popping or construction noises.

But quickly, as four more shots popped, people scrambled for cover. Some screamed. Others ran, dropped to the floor or searched for doors, dressing rooms and employee lounges.

Some people told of horrific images they saw. A man talking on his cellphone and then falling to the floor. Someone shot in the back of the head, covered in blood. Someone else shot on the second floor while looking up an escalator.

Mickey Vickroy, 74, a worker in the gift wrap section of Von Maur’s, said she saw her manager on his side and another co-worker on his back. She saw another woman crumpled, and a young man flat on his back, motionless.

“These were people you knew,” Ms. Vickroy said, “people you work with.”

Witnesses said they heard at least 15 shots in all, maybe more.

Scores of police officers began swarming to the mall six minutes after the first call, police officials said. They locked down the mall.

Police helicopters circled overhead as officers searched for the gunman. Clusters of shoppers and workers, meanwhile, hid, unsure what would come next.

The police went store to store, department to department, finding clusters of people and ushering them out — hands over their heads to show that they were not the gunman — to safety outside. There, some wept and clutched one another in the frozen air.

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People huddled today outside an Omaha shopping mall after a man with a rifle opened fire inside. Credit
Nati Harnik/Associated Press

Eventually, the police found the Mr. Hawkins’s body. A suicide note was found, they said.

Outside the house in Bellevue where Mr. Hawkins had lived, Debora Kovac, whose family had taken him in, said he had wrestled with problems. He was estranged from his family. In the last two weeks, Ms. Kovac said, he had lost his girlfriend.

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“We tried to get him to come to the house, but he said it was too late,” Ms. Kovac said. “When we heard about the shooting, I had a sick feeling about it.”

She said that he obtained a weapon on Tuesday evening from his father’s home and that at the time he said he planned to use it for target shooting on Wednesday.

Late Wednesday, law enforcement officers prepared to search the Bellevue house.

Among the five injured, two were listed in critical condition, hospital officials said. The injuries varied widely. One victim was treated at the Nebraska Medical Center and sent home, officials said, having cut his face when he hit a clothing rack trying to seek cover.

At his home in west Omaha on Wednesday evening, Jeff Schaffart, among those wounded by the gunfire, said, “I’m damn lucky to be alive.”

Mr. Schaffart nursed a wound through the left arm and a finger.

“I assume I have to come to grips with it at some point, why I didn’t get shot in the head, why I didn’t get killed,” he said.

A 61-year-old man was listed in critical condition and underwent surgery into the evening for a shot to his upper left chest.

“What’s clear was the high fatality rate,” said Dr. Robert Muelleman, director of the medical center’s emergency department. “We knew he had a high-velocity weapon.”

Late in the day at a Hampton Inn not far from the mall, more than 30 family members and friends of the victims waited in a conference room to hear about loved ones. Names had not been formally issued for the people who had waited since early afternoon.

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Credit
The New York Times

Red Cross workers, chaplains and mental health counselors joined them to wait.

From the hotel, five bands of white Christmas lights around the Von Maur store glowed.

Statements of sympathy began flowing in from around the country, and prayer services were planned.

Gov. Dave Heineman described the night as a difficult one for the entire state and sent condolences to victims’ families.

Just hours before the shooting, President Bush had been here for a fund-raiser.

“Having just visited with so many members of the community in Omaha today, the president is confident that they will pull together to comfort one another as they deal with this terrible tragedy,” the White House said in a statement.

The incident was the second mass shooting at a mall by a young adult this year. In February, an 18-year-old killed five people and wounded four more in Salt Lake City before the police killed him.

The Westroads Mall is in western Omaha, near Warren Buffett’s Borsheim jewelry store. Once near the city’s edge, with cornfields in the distance, the shopping center is now surrounded by suburban development.

As the authorities searched for evidence in the mall, the state’s largest, yellow police tape encircled the sprawling parking lot.

The Von Maur store features live piano music in all its Midwestern stores. Kathy Hegarty of Plattsmouth was shopping in the men’s department with her husband, Jim, when she heard gunshots.